Gujarat High Court reserves order

Gujarat High Court reserved its order on the constitutionality and validity of the State government’s notification banning the publication, sale and distribution of Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah in the State.

As the three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice K. S. Radhakrishnan resumed the hearing on a public interest litigation filed by two writers challenging the validity of the State government’s notification, an affidavit in the name of Additional Secretary (Home), Dhananjay Dwivedi was filed before the court on behalf of the State government.

The State government reiterated that it could issue another notification giving details of the grounds for imposing the ban on the book. The affidavit said such details were not issued in the first notification because it was not in favour of publicising those matters in the book on which the ban order was issued so that the objectionable parts did not come to the knowledge of people.